Itemization is great this time around. We need more

[AndreaColombo]

FWIW, I prefer the Deadfire system. Weapons feel more unique, and it shows that more thought and effort went into each. The unfortunate side effect is that each weapon must have taken longer to design and implement, so we've got less of them in general. We need more, which seems to be happening with the DLCs (on 2nd August we'll get new equipment from the free DLC and more equipment from the paid one.)

 

I loved the first Pillars, but finding a weapon with a lash or the slaying enchantment felt boring cause I could slap those on any weapon I wanted.

 

 

I'll say this, though: Not many lash weapons at all in Deadfire, as it seems. I was hoping we'd get a flaming sword—because it's iconic for fantasy games and because we were shown an early version in one of Josh's teasers that looked super badass. Hopefully in one of the DLCs...

Edited July 27, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[gkathellar]

FWIW, I prefer the Deadfire system. Weapons feel more unique, and it shows that more thought and effort went into each. The unfortunate side effect is that each weapon must have taken longer to design and implement, so we've got less of them in general. We need more, which seems to be happening with the DLCs (on 2nd August we'll get new equipment from the free DLC and more equipment from the paid one.)

 

I loved the first Pillars, but finding a weapon with a lash or the slaying enchantment felt boring cause I could slap those on any weapon I wanted.

 

 

I'll say this, though: Not many lash weapons at all in Deadfire, as it seems. I was hoping we'd get a flaming sword—because it's iconic for fantasy games and because we were shown an early version in one of Josh's teasers that looked super badass. Hopefully in one of the DLCs...

 

I agree, Deadfire's system is generally an improvement and the items are a lot more interesting this time around (although aesthetically, Deadfire's armor is pretty lame by comparison).

[Rheios]

FWIW, I prefer the Deadfire system. Weapons feel more unique, and it shows that more thought and effort went into each. The unfortunate side effect is that each weapon must have taken longer to design and implement, so we've got less of them in general. We need more, which seems to be happening with the DLCs (on 2nd August we'll get new equipment from the free DLC and more equipment from the paid one.)

 

I loved the first Pillars, but finding a weapon with a lash or the slaying enchantment felt boring cause I could slap those on any weapon I wanted.

 

 

I'll say this, though: Not many lash weapons at all in Deadfire, as it seems. I was hoping we'd get a flaming sword—because it's iconic for fantasy games and because we were shown an early version in one of Josh's teasers that looked super badass. Hopefully in one of the DLCs...

I can see the lack of excitement some, but I just think that means they needed to vary the lashes up on unique items a bit more. If you can only add a few elemental lashes, but certain uniques have stronger lashes of a specific element, or more varied lashes that you can't add (A sun-blade style weapon that has a half-fire lash and a half-raw lash or can inflict a burn wound on a crit, or maybe just a club with a weird slashing lash).  Alternatively make them take some rarer items so you have to consider it more. 

 

I only ever felt the POE1's uniques weren't unique though when they didn't have a backstory on them. That's probably my favorite part about uniques,  knowing that they had a place in the world.

[Larena]

I wish the number and types of unique items weren't so unbalanced. We really need more unique axes and didn't need nearly as many unique sabers or swords

[Whosdriving]

My thought- which admittedly may be terrible- would be just to keep POE1 generic enchanting to help empower builds using underrepresented items...

Please this.

Generic enchantments were usually weaker(as they should be, even making the unique versions of lash 5% stronger would have been enough to distinguish them) they allowed players to make usable(not necessarily good, but the game isnt a competition) characters that could finish the game with a weapon type that had no, or few uniques.

[Hassat Hunter]

 

I massively agree itemnisation is greatly improved.

PoE1's loot was MASSIVELY dissapointing since every item was just a sum of parts you could craft yourself.

 

You've been tricked.

Easily over 90% of unique weapons had something you COULDN'T enchant yourself.

 

 

In the base game or White March?

I know they tried to improve their system in White March but it was too late, too little. Don't know if they retro-actively added more interesting stuff to the base game, probably not.

The only loot-related thing remotely interesting to find in PoE1 was pets. Which didn't even have stats, they were just better since it was some reward that wasn't just "craft-components X and Y".

 

 

 

I massively agree itemnisation is greatly improved.

PoE1's loot was MASSIVELY dissapointing since every item was just a sum of parts you could craft yourself.

You've been tricked.

Easily over 90% of unique weapons had something you COULDN'T enchant yourself.

 

Facts. PoE1's unique items were not necessarily compelling, but they were unique.

 

 

Can't recall finding ANY in the base game.

A few in White March but since I levelscaled since end-game save, and the loot didn't scale, they weren't all that enticing either.

Exploring in PoE1 was extremely unrewarding due to the lack of good loot to be found, something PoE2 fortunately doesn't suffer from with every location to explore generally giving an unique item, which are interesting by not being just the sum of crafting parts.

God I hate PoE1's crafting making loot 100% obsolete.

 

 

My thought- which admittedly may be terrible- would be just to keep POE1 generic enchanting to help empower builds using underrepresented items...

Please this.

Generic enchantments were usually weaker(as they should be, even making the unique versions of lash 5% stronger would have been enough to distinguish them) they allowed players to make usable(not necessarily good, but the game isnt a competition) characters that could finish the game with a weapon type that had no, or few uniques.

 

Shouldn't be a shock I disagree. Even if the crafting allows weaker versions of unique's, it would ruin the unique's, well, unique-ness. Oh wow, 10% instead of 5%... yaaaay.

Please, if there's anything from PoE1 I never EVER want again it's the loot system. Utter utter garbage.

That isn't to say we can use more uniques from certain weapon types indeed. Or even some items overall. While my entire team is decked in superb, Aloth still has one Exceptional and one Fine(!) wand since apparently, nobody uses wands in this world except fine's :/

 

If the choice is "make more uniques" or "re-invent the system that made PoE1's loot the least interesting in a RPG EVER" I go for #1.

Oh, and improve the enchantment UI of course, that's definitely needed too.

[hilfazer]

In the base game or White March?

 

In base and WM combined. But maybe it's true for just base game alone as well.

I've just picked random weapon type from gamepedia, a war bow, and checked enchantments on uniques:

- Borresaine - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- Cloudpiercer - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- Sabra Marie - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- The Rain of Godagh Field - 1 nonenchantable property

Caedebald's Blackbow is a summoned weapon so it doesn't count i guess.

 

All unique war bows have something that can't be enchanted. It was true in vanilla game already.

 

I once challenged myself with finding a unique weapons that can be completely recreated by enchanting and i found, like, 2 of them.

 

There's a reason virtually every build posted on these fora uses unique weapons.

 

I'm not saying PoE's itemization is good or better than Deadfire, i'm saying enchanting system in PoE1 wasn't a problem and didn't kill uniqueness of unique weapons.

This page might interest you:

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_enchantments

[gkathellar]

 

In the base game or White March?

 

In base and WM combined. But maybe it's true for just base game alone as well.

I've just picked random weapon type from gamepedia, a war bow, and checked enchantments on uniques:

- Borresaine - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- Cloudpiercer - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- Sabra Marie - 2 nonenchantalbe properties

- The Rain of Godagh Field - 1 nonenchantable property

Caedebald's Blackbow is a summoned weapon so it doesn't count i guess.

 

All unique war bows have something that can't be enchanted. It was true in vanilla game already.

 

I once challenged myself with finding a unique weapons that can be completely recreated by enchanting and i found, like, 2 of them.

 

There's a reason virtually every build posted on these fora uses unique weapons.

 

I'm not saying PoE's itemization is good or better than Deadfire, i'm saying enchanting system in PoE1 wasn't a problem and didn't kill uniqueness of unique weapons.

This page might interest you:

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_enchantments

 

Yep. Unique-in-name-only weapons are limited to Fortanero's Rapier, Durance's Staff, and the junk sold at the Club for Refined and Prestigious Gentlemen, and every suit of unique armor has at least a skill bonus to make it stand out (although Durance's Robes, to be fair, were fake uniques at release).

 

Crafting was always limited to:

• quality, lash, and slaying property for weapons
• quality, +1/+2 attribute bonus, and damage-type-proofing for armor.
• quality for shields

Edited July 28, 2018 by gkathellar

[Hassat Hunter]

I probably missed the "true unique" items then under the myriad of bs like this;

 

[images]

 

This is how I remember PoE1's itemnisation... 3 years later.

 

Maybe it wasn't that bad, but my memory is the items were attrocious, loot was junk and not fun at all, and the single worst thing of PoE1 was the lootsystem, thanks to enchanting.

 

I can safely say none of these are the case for PoE2, which makes me very very happy, and EXTREMELY hesistant to return to the old times where I have such unpleasant memories of.

Edited July 28, 2018 by Hassat Hunter

[gkathellar]

The myriad of bs like that was almost exclusively in the Codex Collection (which kind of amuses me, in a mean way). IT can't be taken as representative, given that they're more easter eggs than they are items.

[AndreaColombo]

Sword of Daenysis has both Speed and Rending, which couldn’t be enchanted.

 

As an aside, “Speed” was my favorite enchantment of all because my play style heavily favors fast-paced aggro.

Edited July 28, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[Boeroer]

Sword of Daenysis was one of the best dps weapons in PoE. Spectacular Spetum is a good backup weapon for a marking character (like Paladin) who uses BotEP as main weapon. Posting those as examples for rubbish uniques shows that the criticism is not based on a solid foundation of knowledge.

 

The rest of the posted items was - as others already said - the CRPG collection which contained backer items - some of them were really good (Sword of Daenysis, Vile Loner's Lance), some ok (Spectacular Spetum, The Temperacl) while most of them were just exceptional weapons with a nice name and a golden border. But you could buy those exceptional weapons really early and that made them not bad at all. 

[Hassat Hunter]

The myriad of bs like that was almost exclusively in the Codex Collection (which kind of amuses me, in a mean way). IT can't be taken as representative, given that they're more easter eggs than they are items.

My bad then. I just remember how I hated the itemnisation in PoE with a fiery passion and unwilling to replay it ever again (with that as primary cause) went through my screens to find the few items I screenshotted. If not representative, that's my bad.

 

Though needless to say, when itemnisation and enchantment ruined my PoE experience, obviously I don't want that stuff to return to PoE2, which as also stated by the OP, is decisively better in the itemnisation department and finding new loot is fun, not a chore, uninteresting or even aggrevating. PoE's loot was a giant step backwards from the IE-titles, even if I didn't oppose randomnisation to increase replayability (just that the items being so annoying I don't want to ever replay it).